LONG BLOG

This is the major details and announcements from the Epic Games livestream (http://www.twitch.tv/epicgamesinc) hosted by Rod aka GearsViking (EPIC Director of Production) and Flak(Epic Community manager).

I tried to highlight the main details of the livestream and it was typed hastily so forgive me if I switch randomly from a description in my own words to Rod's own words from livestream.

Gears of War 3 Q&A - 5th October

STATS:

-The most popular Horde map is Overpass

-The most popular map in development was Drydock

-1% of players have beat Campaign on Insane

-56.5% of players have beat the first ten waves of Horde

-89 million waves of Horde played

-6 million Horde matches played

Events:

-Torque bow tag is a possible upcoming event

-EPIC have more control than Gears 2 in what weapons are where, they can replace pick up weapons and starter weapons in case of events like Torque bow tag

-Shotgun only event is a possible upcoming event

-More Gears 2 XP events are likely in future

-Halloween even is a possibility

Jack in the Box Liquid Green Skins Promo:

-The original plan was to have the skins as a Microsoft employee only skin

-EPIC had planned for a promo with Jack in the Box and they had wanted to do something in-game

-Microsoft volunteered the green skins for a marketing promo

-Rod meant before when he said the skins would be accessible by everybody that they could walk into a store and pick them up easily

-Details are still being figured out for international access to the green skins

-The exclusivity of the green skins ends on January 1st and EPIC could possibly make a new giveaway for the skins

DLC1:-The first pack is tailored for Horde

-There is a new fortification called command center which will act like a panic button for quick support

-It has three levels: Sniper->Mortar->Hammer of Dawn

-Players can call in each of these to kill enemies

-New sentry is called the Flame Sentry and slows down enemies

-Added another level to decoy, they can now become bots and run and fight as an ally

-Another layer added to the silverback, where you can upgrade it and it now fires rockets and becomes white in colour

-Rustlung - Originally designed to be a medical facility morgue, the buttons that raised cover used to raise slabs for bodies

-Rustlung is now a ship map with storms outside

-Blood Drive - It was the number 1 Horde map on Gears 2 so it will be brought back

-Rod believes it was popular on Gears 2 for Horde because of defendable rooms

-EPIC wanted a darker feel and darker maps for Gears 3 which is the reason why the new Blood Drive takes place at night

-Azura is the third new map

-The new maps can't be played in Quick Match or Ranked they are only available in Private Versus, Horde and Beast

-Kill Locust like a boss - Complete a hardcore or above boss wave with five Onyx Guards 100 GS

Other Questions:

-Latin American Gears complained there was no option to play in Spanish on the US disc. EPIC are considering a language pack for this.

-Vengeful medal was designed as a leg up for new palyer

-In beta Nemesis was killed 3 times by an enemy which was changed to killed 5 times by an enemy

-Vengeful requires Nemesis and for good players it is difficult to get since they die less so requirements will be softened for Vengeful

-Skins for weapons besides the five starter weapons? not possible

-Adding Shriekers to Beast? it was difficult to add flying characters and resulted in glitches and players getting out of map, so no

-Difficulty choice for Horde and Beast on public? for matchmaking you need the biggest pool of people, EPIC however can change the default matchmaking difficulty to make everyone play it

-Possibly hardcore Beast or Horde event in future

-Quick match Horde? The problem is new people joining might join in progress even at wave 50, again the problem is segmentation of the pool of gamers. It would mean people don't get to choose map or wave if they join in progress

-Season Pass Confusion - It is like a preorder for the DLC, you purchase Season pass and you get the DLC packs for free as they are released. If you plan on getting 4 DLCs you get a 33% discount if you buy Season Pass over purchasing them separately.

-At some point it will not make sense for the Season Pass to still be there so possibly after all 4 DLC packs are released it will be removed

-Sawed-off - We hear you and we are looking into it. We want to see if the shotguns are meeting their roles

-EPIC will continue to make changes and experiment on maps, pick up weapons and damage values. They did not want to respond to the knee jerk reaction and wanted to make changes after testing and make sure changes are deliberate

-Australian and New Zealanders have had their ping area expanded so it is easier to find dedicated servers

Unlocks:

-The time stamp requirement for Domination weapon skin unlocks will be removed

-Beta unlock fix patch is on the way

Team Epic Gamers:

-These gamers got early access to the game

-You can be an a team epic gamer by helping the community, being a valued member and having a high level of interaction